Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.

Bad Girl, Good Woman

Where Deborah Lived in 2003: Picture taken beside I-90 in 2007, site cleaned 2008

I met Deborah at a cleanup at Dr. José Rizal Park. Bright, interested, she blended in with the volunteers EarthCorps assembled in December to prep the soil for a larger event, scheduled for this upcoming Saturday, January 16, a kickoff for a weekend of volunteerism celebrating Dr. King’s birthday.

We got to talking that frigid day, I try to connect with folks who come, to hear their stories should they choose to share.

Deborah did. “The park is so much better than it used to be,” she said, a silver nose ring bobbing as a smile spread on her full, purple lips.

“You’ve been here before?” I asked.

“I used to live in the park,” she said.

“Wow,” my tone slipped into the easy familiars of English, “you must’ve seen a lot of change.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said.

Deborah spent four hours collecting and schlepping trash uphill, the urban flotsam and jetsam we’ve come to expect in our city parks. She and the other 30 helpers carried over 300 native plants down into the bowl where the slopes come together. It was a cold day, in the middle of the pre-holiday cold snap, the ground too stiff for planting, so we staged the ferns, shrubs, and trees for January, when the earth might be more forgiving.

This second Saturday of the new year, Deborah returned. Our small team of us and one other – a service worker named Juan, a great guy – scoured the slopes for bottles, broken glass, plastic, metal, the pieces that could stop the rhythm of digging and placing so many plants into the soil the following weekend.

Before going off to clear a particularly contaminated site, I said to her, “Can I ask you some questions about what it was like to live here?”

She sighed, and told more than expected.

“I lived in the park in 2003. I came here after spending 25 months in juvenile lockdown since I was sixteen. When I was eighteen, I got out, relapsed, and went on the streets again.”

“That was a dangerous time in the park,” I replied, “especially for women.”

Where Deborah Walked: The I-90 – I-5 Interchange

“Yes,” she said, “it was. There are drug rings. They’re really little cartels over by I-90.”

“Yeah, there are,” I agreed. “When I tell people about drug rings, they don’t want to believe in them.”

“Oh, they are there,” experience spoke.

“In the afternoon you’ll see twenty guys all dealing lined up by the highway, by the big concrete walls.”

“Where did you live in the park?”

“Over there,” she gestured past the fence of the off-leash area, toward a spot where a bramble of 10-foot high blackberry once dominated the landscape, near the highway interchange. It was a risky place, all right, where men had been murdered and women raped.

“Dangerous spot,” I said, “especially for women.”

She took a deep breath, her hazel eyes focused beyond me, her features set seriously. “I was assaulted several times. I spent a lot of time looking for places where people would leave me alone. I’ve blocked out a lot in my life.” She inhaled deeply. “There are still a lot of women assaulted down there.” She gestured at the Dearborn cut.

“I lived on the streets,” her voice lightened, “in cities up and down the West Coast, I had a lot of fun and a lot of hard times.”

She had been a thief and a junkie. “I’ve been mostly clean for two years. I went into the emergency room with a drug abscess and they told me I was pregnant. That changed everything for me, I’ve had a couple of minor relapses, but I’ve been totally clean for over a year. I want to do right by my daughter.” The woman’s face changed to the girl she had almost been.

“How’s your holidays?”

“Great, my husband and I had a great Christmas, two years ago, there was only one present, one package around the tree, for my daughter, this year there were presents for all of us. I’m spending a lot of time with my grandma, she’s got health problems, she’s been sick, she mostly raised me.”

“It must really be something coming back here,” I said.

“I want to give something back. For the last year, I’ve been a mom, and my husband says it’s okay, he knows I need to get out and do something.”

She was happy, truly happy, in a way so many of us who have had so much more may not understand. I could hear in her voice echoes of the people in her past, whom she loved, whom she befriended, who befriended her however briefly in the compassion of the streets.

We finished early, Juan and I hauling big black bags of stuff up the hill, joking between us, he getting my English, me getting his Spanish, I promised to speak better Spanish when we met again. “Let’s get back to our lives,” I said.

“And let’s go home to our families,” Deborah answered. “I’ll see you next time.” She ran across the street to the bus stop. Juan and I waved at the driver of the approaching 36, who pulled his bus over for a woman with purple lipstick, a purple shock in her hair, silver shining on her face.

Call her Deborah, not a real name, as a past once shared should be carefully shared.

Call her Deborah, after The Song of Deborah, the prophetess in Judges, for a mother arose like the sun in her strength, though she had taken to a winding path.

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate.